The 50 most active kidney transplant centers in 2016

Record number of organ transplants in the US shuffles ranking of transplant centers

University of California Davis Medical Center cracked the code as the busiest kidney transplant center in the U.S. in 2016, dethroning the University of California San Francisco Medical Center for the first time in seven years.

UC Davis’ #1 ranking among the 50 most active kidney transplant centers, published by NN&I since 2009, was aided by a three-month shutdown of UCSF’s transplant program after a donor death occurred in December 2015. The program reopened in March 2016 and still recorded 329 kidney transplants last year, moving to #5 in the ranking.

For 2016, UC Davis performed 402 kidney and kidney-pancreas transplants, based on data provided by the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network (www.unos.org). Both Methodist Specialty and Transplant Hospital (TX) and UCLA Medical Center maintained their #2 and #3 spots, respectively, from 2015.

During 2016, 33,606 transplants were reported, representing an 8.5% increase over the 2015 total and an increase of 19.8% since 2012. Transplants have increased nearly 20% in the past five years. The growth in overall transplants was largely driven by an increase of 9.2% in the number of deceased donors from 2015 to 2016, continuing a six-year trend of annual increases. Approximately 82% (27,628) of the transplants involved organs from deceased donors. The remaining 18% (5,978) were performed with organs from living donors.

The data used in this ranking is provided by the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network (www.unos.org), and includes deceased and living donor kidney and kidney/pancreas transplants. The OPTN recorded 9,116 deceased kidney donors in 2016 (8,250 in 2015) and 5,631 living kidney donors (5,630 in 2015), resulting in 5,630 living kidney donor transplants (5,628 in 2015) and 13,431 deceased donor kidney transplants in 2016 (12,250 in 2015). There were also 798 kidney/pancreas transplants in 2016 (719 in 2015).

Nephrology News & Issues covers the latest developments in nephrology and provides a forum for the exchange of ideas among the professional disciplines responsible for delivering care to the ESRD patient.